i read a little about it on wikipedia. from what i gather the enlightenment made the french want to have a republic but then this robespierre guy took it too far and killed tons of people and then napoleon took power.
is this the gist of it? what am i missing?
youtube.com
youtube.com
youtube.com
I think these videos will interest you. In less than half an hour you'll know more about the French Revolution than over 99% of people.
The early stages of the French Revolution was a founding moment of the modern world, so it's good you're learning about it.
the first two videos talk about how Louis XVI and his wife were actually good people, and the third video says that the revolution was not popular and there is no excuse for it happening.
is there not more to the story?
>made the french want to have a republic
The bourgeoisie wanted it not the french.
The 1789 French Revolution was not an attempt to have a republic, but to get rid of the absolute monarchy and establish a constitutional monarchy. It wasn't until 1792 that the goal became to get rid of the monarchy.
Robespierre was just one man in the revolutionary government, not the leader, nor did he have absolute or significant control over the revolutionary/republic government.
>Mad Monarchist
seems unbiased tbqh
naw bruv the sans-culottes were pretty down with it
the peasants and the nobles were the only ones left on the side of monarchism by the 1791
Would the revolutions podcast help this user, Veeky Forumstorians?
>Robespierre was the dictator of France
Is my favorite meme.
He wasn't even in control of Paris much less the whole country.
I also like "Robespierre had Marie Antoinette's last letter hidden under his bed!"
People in the past were much more likely to march to the palace of their leige when times were tough.
Now combine that with the following things
>Repeated undermining of royal authorities. Specifically the king. Eroticism targeting the queen and general criticism go unpunished.
>You can get pamphlets claiming all kinds of things (especially about the queen) near the parlement in Paris and even next to Versailles.
>Huge debt from wars and costly misadventures (rich as Louis 16ths floating port)
> Government takes loans to pay debts
>Creditors confidence in government sinks so interest rates on loans go up
>General public animosity towards the queen.
>King is kind but flipflops continuously, especially when given advice
>King is shy and not assertive, or when he is assertive he does not control perceptions of him and looks blundering.
>Crazy rollercoaster of different finance ministers who either made efforts to restructure debt or ignored it
>Efforts are made by some of the same ministers to remove feudal barriers to a liberalisation of the economy
>Every reform makes some section of society immensely butthurt since they have now lost some of their privilages.
>Reform stalls and restarts constantly for about ten years leading up to the revolution.
>Government is surrounded by parasitic institutions such as the tax farming system which is incredibly inefficient
>People dislike the following things:
>Salt taxation
>Tax exemption of certain classes
>Tax in the form of labour (corvee)
>The queen
>Bread prices rise after a bad crop yield.
>People in different parts of France start revolting on different ways and for different reasons
>Literate class and many nobility decide to turn anger into reform in their favour
>Estates general called. Go to Versailles.
This sums it up pretty well.
Much like the Russian Revolution it was a clusterfuck that ended in tragedy.
Git dat giljotina nigga, cut dat bitch head nigga. We teh bossman now nigga.
Short urban youth version.
also don't ignore the fact that the success of the american revolution (on which the french government had spent over 1 billion livres, all financed with high interest loans) greatly inspired would be revolutionaries across europe and proved that enlightenment ideals rejecting the divine right of kings and the republican ideas of philosophers like John Locke could be realistically applied to government.
>greatly inspired would be revolutionaries across europe and proved that enlightenment ideals rejecting the divine right of kings and the republican ideas of philosophers like John Locke could be realistically applied to government.
>it is a good thing to replace a king legitimate by his ancestry by some republicans who fail to display any legitimacy while still being claiming that monarchies have no legitimacy.
yes, that was their opinion
mostly for the reasons laid out many people in france felt the king's inability to deal with these multiple crises was more important
than his ancestry
THe peasents represented 90% of the population at that time, and even in cities like Nantes or Orléans the people was monarchsist.
Completely wrong. Nobody wanted a republic in 1789.
Just read this and you'll have a better understanding of the Revolution than 99.9% of people.
Listen to Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast.
Robespierre literally did nothing wrong.
The parlement (I assume he means Paris) wasn't aristocrats so much as nobility and they were not the most pre-eminent in the land either. They were very powerful judges who amended law's sometimes.
His whole reading of history seems very odd. The estates general was majority nobles and clergy. Even the third estate. It was the government that came after, the national assembly that wanted to abolish taxes and establish a constitutional monarchy NOT the estates general. This is pretty important and I'm surprised that a frenchie would make this mistake.
Also the tax that Louis wanted to impose was the vingtieme tax which was a general tax on everyone, not the nobles.
If you can't bother reading the millions of books there are about the French revolution, just listen to these OP: podbay.fm
It's not exclusively about the French revolution so if you don't want to go through the English civil war and the American revolution just start from 3.1 - The three estates. The French revolution section ends with nappy at 3.55
That's horribly simplified.
>The parlement (I assume he means Paris)
I presume he means the Estates Generales. They were called together as they were before the absolutism of Louis XIV to convene on important affairs, such as in this case tax reforms. They voted separately by estate (just like in Britain the Lords vote separately from the Commons). The Third Estate didn't like that and wanted a one man one vote system. This is what led to the Tennis Court Oath, where the representatives of the Third Estate (led by a priest, ironically) pledged they would not disband until a constitution was established. This happened after the storming of the Bastille, after which a Constitution was established which eliminated many of the old privileges of the aristocracy and made them equal to the commoners in the Estates Generales.
And it could've been glorious if Louis XVI didn't fuck everything up.
>wasn't aristocrats so much as nobility
wut? And yes the Parliament was the only institution that stood in the way of absolute monarchy.
>The estates general was majority nobles and clergy. Even the third estate.
What are you talking about? The third estate represented the commoners, they were by definition neither nobles nor clergy, which were represented by the other two estates.
> the national assembly that wanted to abolish taxes and establish a constitutional monarchy NOT the estates general.
Nobody wanted to abolish taxes, and the first national assembly (actually the constituent assembly) was formed by the third estate together with a few members from the other two.
>Also the tax that Louis wanted to impose was the vingtieme tax which was a general tax on everyone, not the nobles.
Yes it was, it would have been paid by the nobles as well.
Some people today still don't know this:
>However, in the Renaissance there was a brilliant, uncanny reawakening of the classical ideal, of the noble method of valuing everything: Rome itself woke up, as though from suspended animation, under the pressure of the new, Judaic Rome built over it, which looked like an ecumenical synagogue and was called 'Church': but Judea triumphed again at once, thanks to that basically proletarian (German and English) ressentiment-movement which people called the reformation, including its inevitable consequence, the restoration of the church, - as well as the restoration of the ancient, tomb-like silence of classical Rome. In an even more decisive and profound sense than then, Judea once again triumphed over the classical ideal with the French Revolution: the last political nobility in Europe, that of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, collapsed under the ressentiment-instincts of the rabble, - the world had never heard greater rejoicing and more uproarious enthusiasm!
>True, the most dreadful and unexpected thing happened in the middle: the ancient ideal itself appeared bodily and with unheard-of splendour before the eye and conscience of mankind, and once again, stronger, simpler and more penetrating than ever, in answer to the old, mendacious ressentiment slogan of priority for the majority, of man's will to baseness, abasement, levelling, decline and decay, there rang out the terrible and enchanting counter-slogan: priority for the few. Like a last signpost to the other path, Napoleon appeared as a man more unique and late-born for his times than ever a man had been before, and in him, the problem of the noble ideal itself was made flesh - just think what a problem that is: Napoleon, this synthesis of Unmensch (brute) and Ubermensch (overman) ...
Revolutionaries were literally evil, lad
First of all, the people wasn't """""really"""" involved, it was the bourgeois.
They wanted a constitution, then Louis XVI fucked up, they felt "betrayed" and...well, you know, wars, massacres...
>ust think what a problem that is: Napoleon, this synthesis of Unmensch (brute) and Ubermensch (overman) ...
What exactly did Nietzsche mean by this?
>he last political nobility in Europe, that of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
And what did he even mean by this? In countries like Britain and (the later) unified Germany the nobility would maintain political power (though perhaps not as much as before the French Revolution). What did he even mean when he called the French nobility the "last political nobility in Europe"?
The Marxist perspective of the French Revolution is entirely too streamlined. It wasn't that black and white.
Except many of the delegates sent by the voters to represent the third estate "the commons" were in fact, also nobility. E.g. Mirabeau.
That's completely irrelevant, they were representatives of the commoners.